Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon RX 5500

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 5500, which has a clock speed of 1670 MHz and a GDDR6 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and uses a 7 nm design. It is made up of 1408 SPUs, 88 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 5500		150 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 5500 should be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 7870 XT overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500		229376 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 37376 (19%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 is quite a bit (about 65%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500		146960 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 58160 (65%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 5500 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500		53440 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23840 (81%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.